"You want me to join your cause?" I asked. "What does that even mean?" Prick chuckled.

"Walk with me," he said, walking past me. I did as he asked, following him down the rocky, red tunnel. The walls are still pretty rough here... Hmm... Are they new? Were they recently dug out? Would make sense, Diamonds dogs after all, but... "For many centuries, demons have been dying from starvation. Do you know how demons live?"

"I know the basics; making copies and sending them to collect energy, right?" We rounded a corner.

"That is correct. What you likely don't know is that when a demon's true body dies, its magic does not." Dammit...

"Yeah, I kinda dropped outta school, so I have no bucking idea what you mean by magic dy-"

"The demonic magic, rather than decomposing with the rest of the body, soaks into the demon's flesh."

"How can magic so-?"

"Obviously, this happens far sooner than when the flesh decomposes. When the flesh does decompose, the magic goes with it and then... Well, honestly I'm not sure what happens then." The tunnel sloped into a ramp going up. The floor's still smoother here... Can Diamond Dogs normally dig this smoothly? Did they specially go over this to make it easy to walk on? "My partners and I happened to find a corpse of a demon lying around after digging our way to Tartarus, long story, and devoured the remaining flesh as we hadn't eaten in days." The tunnel evened out and we rounded another corner.

"Wait, you dug to-?"

"The demonic magic was absorbed into our bodies, giving us amazing abilities that no Diamond Dogs had ever had before! The ability to enter minds, the ability to warp reality, the ability to manipulate heat in any way your mind can imagine!" Reality warping? Sound kinda like Dicklord, but... "Do you know how amazing it is to have such control over something as powerful as fire?!" The tunnel began to widen.

"Actually, yeah I-"

"Rhetorical question, I know your background. M-"

"Interrup' me again and I'll give ya a real reason to have red skin!"

"Uh... Right... I apologize."

"Why are you hairless and red, anyway?"

"Side effect of the demon magic, a little aesthetic mutation. Nothing to worry about, but... A little chilly." Well, that explains the smallest question. I bit my tongue to stop myself laughing. "It's warm down here anyway, so it's hard to notice but... Chilly." I nodded.

"Plus it made your face so grotesque that even your mother would kill you on sight." Prick stopped walking.

"This is my normal face." I stopped too.

"Yeah, I wouldn't be so happy about that if I were you."

"Wow, you're a bitch."

"Isn't that weird for you to say?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're a Dog and you're using slang that refers to ferals."

"We're getting off track." He continued walking again and I followed again. "After gaining our amazing magical abilities, we plotted for two hundred days and nights before forming the most brilliant, diabolical, masterful, ingenuous, wonderful, fantastic, fanciful, incredible, unbelievable, unreal, chimerical, extravagant, phantasmagoric, exceptional, prominent, splendid, marvelous, sensational, terrific, transcendent plan ever conceived in the multiverse! Our plan is to-!"

"Kill Celestia and take over Equestria?" He froze on the spot. Looks like a 'yes'... There was long silence.

"I-I mean, it's a bit more complicated than that, but..." There was a little more silence before he sighed. "Yes, that, uh, that's our plan. We learned of your hated for the Sun Goddess which formed during the Changeling invasion a few months ago." Except that very few Ponies know about that... I need to find out where they're getting their information from, there could be somepony betraying us in Ponyville... Then again, he said something about mind control, so... "We know of your great combat abilities, we know of your great magical abilities, we even know where you're from." Wait, they know...?

"You know where I'm from?"

"Yes. Somewhere abroad, am I correct? I, uh, forget the exact location, but-" I rolled my eyes.

"Oh yeah, that's completely correct." Shitty source of information if that's what they think...

"Good to know. The question remains, however, will you join our cause?"

"Lemme get this straight; you want me to betray everypony I know and everything I've fought for since coming here, murder the ruler of the land, enslave a country and probably set off a few wars that'll mean the deaths of hundreds of innocents?" Prick frowned.

"I see you have made your decision."

"Yeah, I have." Prick snarled before bending over slightly, as if going into some sort of strange battle stance. Interesting... His paws are forward as if he's gonna slash, but his balance is completely off... He'd easily trip if he attacked like that... Before he could finish, however, I stuck out a hoof. He stopped what he was doing and looked confused.

"What are you-?"

"I'm happy to join your cause." Prick smiled and shook my hoof.

"And I'm happy that you made the right decision." And you're also a gullible dumbass... He let go of my hoof. "Allow me to show you around and tell you the... Finer points of the plan."

"Go right ahead." He once again began walking and I once again followed.

Author's Notes:

News:
It doesn't look like the life stuff will be over with anytime soon, so I'll try to write when I both have time and am motivated. On a side note, I kinda hate how the last part of that sentence went. It makes sense and is correct, but putting the 'am' section so separate from the 'I' really infuriates me for some reason. I guess I just need more exposure to it. Then again, when I tried that tactic with a phobia of mine, it made it three times worse. Oh well, what could possibly go wrong apart from what I literally typed a sentence ago?!

Going back to the main subject, I may need to change how I write. I'm going to take a two to four week break to see if it help me get more motivated with writing. The good news to this is that this should be a fun arc (and won't be horrendously long (6 MONTHS OF HUMANS?!)) that will make some very fun, very interesting and very permanent changes to the plot. There'll be a new picture coming up (most likely in the next chapter) that I'll probably work on during the break.

On the subject of pictures, I'm probably going to update all of the previous pictures in the story. This has already been done in The Return Of Harmony with Vesper's first picture. While I am going to change how perspective is shown to have changed, I'm going to keep the previous way how it is (but like I said, update the visuals).

In any case, I hope you enjoy the rest of this story and have fun reading it.

...

I don't know how to finish this, so here's the updated picture of Vesper for anyone who hasn't seen it yet: